Nov 24, 2012 9:02 PM

I took these photos near Muchelney, Someset on Friday 23rd November. I drove past about a 1/2mile of spiders escaping the recent floods. I just thought I would share these images for people interested in spiders.

Thanks for posting the photos. I don't think these are just any spiders. Most spiders are not gregarious, and even when they escape floods would rather scatter in the vegetation on those islands, not become suddenly colonial and building communal webs. What you photographed may be the brood of one female, with the spiderlings still together before dispersal. But these could also be - and this could be more interesting - a type of spider that is colonial. Ostearius melanopygius, in the same family as the common garden spiders (Araneae) has this habit of living together with other spiders and building large webs. Here is a page about the species in Britain, and here is another page with some photos.

Hi florin, thanks for your comments and links. The thing I found strange about this was that there was about half a mile of these web s and they all where along the edge of the flood waters. All webs where in bushes/trees. My camera could not pick up the web's in trees due to poor light/camera quality. I have driven this road for about 6 years and never seen anything like this. Either way it was a rather

From the nov 2 photo I'd guess that they're linyphiids (money spiders), which makes sense if they were spiders driven out of the lower vegetation of a grass verge, riverbank or whatever, as linyphiid spiders would be the most common. I think I can see the clubbed palps on some, indicating that they're adult males. I can see no evidence that they're Ostearius, though it's hard to tell.